


Flashes

by FancifulRivers



Category: The Talisman - Stephen King & Peter Straub
Genre: AU, Death, Gen, Magical breaks with reality, Thunderstorms, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:05:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3107129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancifulRivers/pseuds/FancifulRivers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disclaimer-I own none of this (sadly).</p><p>AU, and with an original character. Casandra hasn't been to the Territories since she was a young child, but one night, a thunderstorm proves to be the gateway to the land of her childhood dreams. Or nightmares. Especially when Morgan enters the picture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashes

The lights flickered.

Casandra Brahm, soon-to-be Casandra Vaughn, looked up from her book, grimacing in annoyance. The weatherman had said the storm was going to pass them right on by. It wasn't a surprise that, as usual, he'd been wrong. Sighing, she stood up, feeling the tendons in her neck creak, and the now all too familiar twinges center down her back. If this kept up, she'd be making another trek to the family doctor, who would give her that  _look_ again, the one that said he remembered her in short pants and tufted pigtails and why wouldn't she just  _take care of herself_ is what he'd like to know. Sometimes she wanted to switch, but it wasn't worth the bitching.

Lightning lit up the room, followed by an enormous crack of thunder that made Casandra shriek and drop her book, losing her place as it tumbled to the thick pile carpet. A second later, the lights went out, and she stood in darkness. 

"Well shit," she muttered. The candles were in the kitchen, in the drawer by the sink, but she had no idea where the matches were kept. Rodney had moved them. Rodney had moved a great deal of things in the few months they'd been living together before the wedding and sometimes she wasn't sure whether or not she wanted Rodney to simply keep on moving, right on out of her life. He was comfortable, familiar, like a slightly threadbare pair of fluffy socks from summer camp, but comfortable didn't make your heart race, and familiar didn't tap dance out into the rain with an umbrella and a flair for romance. Casandra didn't love him. She felt  _comfortable_ with him. She'd thought it amounted to the same thing.

But Rodney was on a business trip, some new-fangled insurance thing (if he was more creative, Casandra might have wondered if he was cheating on her), and he wouldn't be back for another day or so. Meanwhile, the storm.

Hobbling along, her hands held carefully out at waist length, Casandra felt her way into the kitchen anyway, retrieving a fat white taper that was cold and waxy beneath her fingertips. It smeared along her skin and made her think uneasily of corpse flesh.

Lightning flashed again, lighting up her kitchen for a split second, and ghostly after-images lingered in front of her eyes for a moment. She laughed uneasily. For a moment, it had looked like outside was... _different._ Like instead of the driveway and the mailbox that leaned just a little to the left from Rodney clipping it one night when he came home three sheets to the wind and the bushes she'd planted along the edge of the lawn to make it look more genteel, it was a wilderness, lashed with trees and hungry-looking vegetation with just a tinge of savagery.

Then she blinked again, and it was gone. Her car sat docilely under the carpark, rain dripping down on the trunk and pooling under the bumper. There was nothing.

"That was weird," Casandra said carefully, clutching the tapered candle like it was some kind of talisman to ward off the storm. Rain sheeted down, turning the glass wavy. When the lightning flashed again, she couldn't help it as she rose on tiptoes, straining her eyes against the brightness.

Again. Trees that she'd never seen before, that didn't look like they belonged in this world, clawed at the storm-rent sky, branches twisted and dripping with dark, oily leaves and dangerous clusters of fruit. Flowers that bobbed and swayed under the thrash of the wind, seeming to call her name in tinny ghost-voices as they eagerly strained toward the window, as if they could smash through the glass and coil their thorns around her.

Frightened, she cried out, a noise that vanished in the clap of thunder, and squeezed her eyes shut so tightly she saw stars. When she opened them again, her driveway looked back, a bastion of stability in the increasing precariousness of Casandra's mind.

 _It's the storm, that's all,_ Casandra consoled herself as she pawed through the utility drawer, hunting against hope for a book of matches or the lighter Rodney kept for the patio barbecue.  _Just the storm. Got you jumpy. Seeing ghosts. Or...trees, as it were. Sit tight, Cass, and as soon as that storm's over, you're gonna go outside and you're gonna prove to yourself there is nothing weird out there. And then won't you feel foolish?_ A laugh barked out across the darkened kitchen and she jumped, nearly dropping the candle, before realizing it had been her. 

 _Cracking up a little, that's all,_ she thought, as her fingers finally closed around the plastic handle of the lighter. It was one of those oversized jobs, the ones that went for $5-$10 down at the grocery store during the Fourth of July sales, and it hadn't been used up. She didn't think anyway. They'd only turned on the grill a couple of times that summer, and it wasn't like they needed the damn thing for anything else. 

Clicking the button once or twice worked like it always had, and the flame flickered to life. Casandra held it up, and a wheezing sort of gasp escaped her. The window was dark now, dark with something pressed against it, and now she could hear it, she could hear thick, oily whispers and a hissing chuckle, and she dropped the lighter in the sink as if it had burned her. She heard the sizzle as the tip landed in the puddle of water around the drain.

"I'm going crazy," she whispered. Her legs trembled. If she hadn't peed only twenty or so minutes before, she was sure her bladder would have let go in an ignominious rush and darkened her sweatpants. Rodney had gotten them for her last month. 

The lightning lit up the room once more. Nothing squashed against the windowpane, nothing scratched along the sill, no whispers. Nothing but the boom of thunder and the hiss of the rain against the roof. Casandra sat down hard on the kitchen floor, feeling the chill of the tiles seep through her sweatpants, and cried.

* * *

 

It was a brief cry, a squall of tears that ended with the thunderstorm outside, and Casandra only looked up when the fluorescents sprung back to life, their stuttering white glow falling over her. She thought she'd feel relieved, but apprehension still sat like a rock in her stomach, tendrils of anxiety knotting into her nerves. If she looked up at the window, she didn't know what she'd see there.

Her cell phone squawked in the other room and she picked herself up off the floor in an awkward roll, eyes prickling and cheeks raw. It was Rodney on the line, of course it was, wanting to know if she was okay after the storm, reassuring her that he'd be home soon. She watched herself answer, chirping that she was fine, the power just got knocked out for a little while, but everything was fine at the OK Corral, yes sirree, love you, too, can't wait to see you. As she talked, she paced, and her free hand wormed into the bottom of her shirt, twisting the edge of the fabric around and around, drawing it tight against small, slightly saggy breasts.

The lights dimmed in warning and her heartbeat sped up.  _It's nothing,_ she tried to reassure herself, hanging up as Rodney clicked off, his familial duties done for the night.  _Leftovers from the storm. Happens all the time._

The lights flashed again, and then once more, almost too brightly to be borne. Then it calmed. She found herself tiptoeing toward the front door, padding there in sock feet, her cell phone still clutched in one sweaty, trembling hand. There--close--her hand closed around the door handle. It was ice under her palm. 

She opened the door and another world stared back.


End file.
